Just as in “Orpheus in the Underworld”, this opera-travesty by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) also uses an ancient Greek subject as a means of caricaturing contemporary social and political issues. The main target of Offenbach’s barbs are the unscrupulousness and moral decline of France’s “Second Empire”. The action of the ancient saga of gods and heroes is stripped of its loftiness and parodistically reduced to an ironic display of very human motivations, weaknesses and excesses. “The ambivalence of Offenbach’s genius emerges here more clearly than in any other of his works – a genius that masters with the same skillfullness all the facets of musical expression: emotion and intellect, romance and parody.” (Bernard Grun, Cultural History of the Operetta)
Zigeunerliebe
Franz Lehár (1870-1948) found remarkably expressive and brilliantly colorful sounds for the drama and romantic moods of this unique topic. The style was decisively influenced by the familiar cadence of Hungarian gypsy music in the composer’s native country. This is not only evidenced by the csárdás rhythms or the inclusion of the cymbalom in the arrangement, but above all by the many pronouncedly melancholy hues of the melody and harmony produced by the use of minor keys. After “The Merry Widow” and “The Count of Luxembourg”, “Gipsy Love” is Franz Lehár’s third most successful operetta. After its triumphant Vienna premiere in 1910, it was performed, for example, at the Empire Theater in Darjeeling, at the foot of the Himalayas! The location shots in our production were filmed in Austria’s Helenental and Vienna Woods.
Der Opernball
Richard Heuberger (1850-1914) came from a wealthy, art-loving Graz (Austria-Hungary) family. After working as an engineer, he decided to devote himself completely to music, working as choral director of the Vienna Singakademie, composer of instrumental music, ballets, cantatas and operas, music critic and music journalist. Shortly before the turn of the century, he tried his luck with operettas. Only his first work, the delicately orchestrated, splendidly hued “Opernball” (Opera Ball) of 1898 – a beautiful and substantial echo of the Strauss era – has managed to maintain its position in the repertoire. In this work, Heuberger tried to create a new operetta style, the “comedy operetta”. He eschewed spectacular costumes and choruses, sentimentality and drama by picking up where Offenbach had left off in “La vie parisienne” and Strauss in “Die Fledermaus”. According to the great Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, he succeeded in “preserving the purity of the Viennese operetta. The ‘Opernball’ was a popular, witty piece and Heuberger accordingly avoided the effects of grand opera, both noisy passion and watered-down sentimentality.”
Beethoven, Symphony No.1 in C major, op.21
When, in the mid 1960s, Herbert von Karajan decided to record on film all nine Beethoven symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic, he began with the “Fifth” and asked the famous French movie director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Quai des Orfèvres) to direct. Recognizing in the music-loving director a kindred soul and master of the symbolic image, Karajan found an inspired partner. In another of Karajan’s first efforts, he asked six directors to “stage” one movement each of a Beethoven symphony. For a full week, the directors had the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan – all in full dress – at their disposal, with all the 35mm film, cameras, lighting and technical assistance they needed. Karajan’s most controversial production was Hugo Niebeling’s highly personal interpretation of the “Pastorale”, with its abstract shots of instruments, rapid rhythms, fade-ins and symbolically arranged colors. s.
Mozart, Requiem K. 626
The Requiem is not only Mozart’s last composition, but also the one most shrouded in mystery. The purportedly enigmatic patron who ordered the work and the fatal illness that befell Mozart while he was working on it long nurtured the macabre legend of Mozart composing his own Requiem mass commissioned by Death himself. The Requiem was completed by Mozart’s friend and pupil Franz Saver Süssmayr on the basis of Mozart’s sketches and instructions. The somber woodwinds and brass, the artless melodies and the stirring shifts from intricate contrapuntal writing to mighty homophonic blocks convey an otherworldly, apocalyptic feeling seldom encountered in Mozart’s works. Despite its almost operatic solo passages and large orchestra, the Requiem was intended for the church, and is indeed an ideal work for the theatrically sumptuous and brilliant Baroque churches of Austria and southern Germany. Karl Böhm was universally acclaimed for his Mozart interpretations. Though Wagner was one of Böhm’s first loves, his friendship with Richard Strauss led to a deep knowledge and appreciation of Mozart. In his autobiography, Böhm wrote that “Richard Strauss revealed to me the ultimate secrets of this, in my opinion, greatest of all musical geniuses, Mozart.” Böhm’s discovery of these secrets transformed his Mozart interpretations into unforgettable events. Filmed in Vienna’s resplendent “Piaristenkirche”, this recording of Mozart’s Requiem features the illustrious Mozart singers Gundula Janowitz, Christa Ludwig, Peter Schreier and Walter Berry.
Die Fledermaus (The Bat)
Full of fizz and subtle humor, “Die Fledermaus” (The Bat) has become a staple of New Year’s Eve programming in many opera houses around the world. In this sparkling production, director Otto Schenk has freed it from the conventional bonds of the theater, broken it up into fully telegenic, whirling visual sequences, and heightened it with the tumultuous gaiety prescribed by Strauss. Act II, often a stiffly staged ball, has at last become one great hurly-burly, a huge festival, an orgy of swaying figures – drunken or otherwise intoxicated. Foremost among them are the frenzied Eberhard Wächter as Eisenstein, the delicious Renate Holm as Adele and the noble Gundula Janowitz as the long-suffering Rosalinde, who does a magnificent gypsy dance. Competing for the title of show-stealer are fabled Bayreuth tenor Wolfgang Windgassen as Prince Orlofsky and actor-director Otto Schenk himself as Frosch. Karl Böhm leads the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chorus of the Vienna State Opera in this spirited recording.
Rafael Kubelik – Portrait
Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996) was the son of the well-known Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelik. He studied music in Prague and made his conducting debut at 20 at the head of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Later he became the principal conductor of this famous orchestra and founded the “Prague Spring” Festival. After the Communist takeover of the government, Kubelik emigrated to the West and returned to his native land only after the end of the Communist regime. From 1950 to 1953 he headed the Chicago Symphony, from 1955 to 1958 he was music director of the Covent Garden Opera in London. A period of great artistic successes began in 1961, when he was appointed principal conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Many recordings document Kubelik’s mastery and sense of artistry, his enjoyment of music and his temperament. His connection with the Munich orchestra lasted 18 years; in between, he also briefly served as music director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Kubelik retired from the concert staged in 1985. But on the occasion of the first Prague Spring Festival after the fall of Communism in 1990, he returned to the podium of the Czech Philharmonic after more than 40 years in exile and conducted Smetana’s “My Fatherland” cycle. His profound bonds with his native land and its composers were always clearly visible. Rafael Kubelik was a full-blooded musician. Every performance of his radiated a feeling of spontaneity, impulsiveness and joy. Kubelik died in Lucerne in August 1996 at the age of 82 after a long illness.
Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde
“Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth) was one of Mahler’s later symphonic works, written in 1908. Mahler often used the human voice as an adjunct to the orchestra in his symphonic writing. “Das Lied von der Erde” borrowed as a framework Hans Bethge’s German translation of six poems by the 18th-century Chinese poet Li-Tai-Po. The songs have been described as “the valedictory of a man who loved life and nature and who knew the bittersweet nostalgia of passing youth and beauty.” The work was recorded at the Frederick Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Leonard Bernstein.
Paganini
With “Paganini” (Vienna, 1925), his 25th stage work, Franz Lehár began an impressive new creative period that was intimately linked to his collaboration with the famous tenor Richard Tauber. The rejuvenation of Lehár’s creative powers enabled him to reach new artistic heights. The enormous success achieved by these works prove how right he was in not merely trying to make people laugh, but also to provide them with emotionally moving situations. One of the most beautiful melodies in the work is “Gern hab’ ich die Frau’n geküsst”, which summarizes Paganini’s entire world and reflects the composer’s inimitable grace and charm.